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Jennifer Litt

The Rounded Tips of Your Fingernails


The evening charge nurse won’t even order
you a milkshake. Clear liquids only, she tells you.
In that case, make it a Beefeater martini
with a cigarette on the side, you say,
and we laugh so hard our eyes tear,

the way we did at tales my sister Liz told us
thirty years ago. The patient who died
on her shift so she hid, a tenderfoot aide,
afraid to bag the body and tag the stiffening toes.
Vouvray and Nicorette? you ask, dying to get home.

I stroke the white half moons, tap the fine bone plates,
and smooth the folding skin. Your fingernails are a late
afternoon cream tea, courtesy of a colon resection
and alimentary IV; their nourished strength
shrouds this slender, fragile hand.

Two nights later I sneak you apple crisp; you dart
the sweetness with your tongue and whir the beating
wing song of the hummingbird. Liz puts one drop each
in your cataract-cauled eyes once you’ve sipped
your breakfast tea, hot and strong.
A memory: you dip the teaspoon’s shallow bowl
into the sugar, raise the handle to the rim, and tap, clink,
tap, clink to sift the sweetness level, smooth.
You’ve measured your life like vermouth
​
and cut the portions with a butter knife,
incisions of cured meat carved into perfect arcs
then squared along the edges of whole wheat.
Dad, your slapstick foil, teased you about your precision;

when you turned your back, he hid your sandwich
in the cluttered utensil drawer. You’ve got a month,
maybe less. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes, two or three tiny bites,
and your affair with solid food is over, kaput, done.
Soon you’ll rendezvous with a feeding tube.

Your hair’s as soft as eider down;
your skin glows. The afternoon shadows
become as long as the rounded tips of your fingernails.
Laid out on your bed, you raise
a pinky finger when I cup your hand.
​

Miss Fall River, Massachusetts, 1921

                                          
Baba was Irish,
but she drank Scotch whiskey.
She sipped by the hour this mighty liquor,
which rolled down her throat in waterfalls of sadness
that could make a priest squirm at the confessional door.

I remember Baba,
her silky blonde hair turned to mulch,
soft face hardened like an untilled garden,
a chin spiked with scattered weeds.

Her hands folded, not in prayer,
but around a highball glass.
A mother at seventeen, excommunicate
at twenty-three, her daughter exiled to a convent.
Baba, the unrepentant beauty queen who couldn’t be a parent.


Silken Nets


In the gym by the bleachers,
I would flutter through the season,
limbs waving and whirling in lines and circles
for the near-men targeting their aerial nets.

I applauded their dewy muscles, sprawling angles,
splashy uniforms like tropical flowers on display.
I could have drowned in the embalming nectar
of those athletes posed as flowers,
been pinned, splayed, displayed in their prized collection
like a trophy in a locked glass case.

But like a viceroy, I eluded their tangled nets.
I spread my viceroy wings, mistaken for a monarch’s,
and hovered above the court,
leaving only the dust of my scales
as delicate as hothouse blossoms.



​ 

--
Jennifer Litt teaches writing at Saint John Fisher and Monroe Community Colleges and is the sole proprietor of Jennifer Litt Writing Services (www.jenniferlitt.com). Her poetry has appeared in HazMat Review, Lake Affect magazine, Mixed Fruit and will be included in Accent Publishing’s short poem anthology. She lives in Rochester, New York.

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  • Home
  • About
    • Our Story
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  • Issue #27 Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Art Spring 2024 >
      • Kristina Erny Spring 2024
      • Luiza Maia Spring 2024
      • Christy Lee Rogers Spring 2024
      • Erika Lynet Salvador Spring 2024
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Poetry Spring 2024 >
      • Terry Belew Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Diamond Forde Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Caridad Moro-Gronlier Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Charlie Coleman Spring 2024
      • Isabelle Doyle Spring 2024
      • Reyzl Grace Spring 2024
      • Kelly Gray Spring 2024
      • Meredith Herndon Spring 2024
      • Mina Khan Spring 2024
      • Anoushka Kumar Spring 2024
      • Cate Latimer Spring 2024
      • BEE LB Spring 2024
      • Grace Marie Liu​ Spring 2024
      • Sarah Mills Spring 2024
      • Faisal Mohyuddin 2024
      • Marcus Myers Spring 2024
      • Mike Puican Spring 2024
      • Sarah Sorensen Spring 2024
      • Lynne Thompson Spring 2024
      • Natalie Tombasco Spring 2024
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2024
      • Donna Vorreyer Spring 2024
    • Fiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Bryan Betancur Spring 2024
      • Karen George Spring 2024
      • Raja'a Khalid Spring 2024
      • Riley Manning Spring 2024
      • Adina Polatsek Spring 2024
      • Beth Sherman Spring 2024
    • Nonfiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Liza Olson Spring 2024
  • Issue #28 Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Art Fall 2024 >
      • Eric Calloway Fall 2024
      • Matthew Fertel Fall 2024
      • JooLee Kang Fall 2024
      • Jian Kim Fall 2024
      • Robb Kunz Fall 2024
      • Sean Layh Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Poetry Fall 2024 >
      • Jodi Balas Fall 2024
      • Clayre Benzadón Fall 2024
      • Catherine Broadwall Fall 2024
      • Sara Burge Fall 2024
      • Judith Chalmer Fall 2024
      • Stephanie Choi Fall 2024
      • Sarah Jack Fall 2024
      • Jen Karetnick Fall 2024
      • Ae Hee Lee Fall 2024
      • Svetlana Litvinchuk Fall 2024
      • Mary Lou Buschi Fall 2024
      • Angie Macri Fall 2024
      • Gary McDowell Fall 2024
      • Sam Moe Fall 2024
      • Camille Newsom Fall 2024
      • Elizabeth O'Connell- Thompson Fall 2024
      • Olatunde Osinaike Fall 2024
      • Jessica Pierce Fall 2024
      • Diane Raptosh Fall 2024
      • Isaac Richards Fall 2024
      • Robyn Schelenz Fall 2024
      • Christopher Shipman Fall 2024
      • Alex Tretbar Fall 2024
      • Ruth Williams Fall 2024
      • Shannon K. Winston Fall 2024
      • Wendy Wisner Fall 2024
      • Anne Gerard Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Fiction Fall 2024 >
      • J​oe Baumann Fall 2024
      • ​Morganne Howell Fall 2024
      • Matt Paczkowski Fall 2024
      • Ryan Peed Fall 2024
      • Gabriella Pitts Fall 2024
      • James Sullivan Fall 2024
  • Issue #29 Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Art Spring 2025 >
      • Irina Greciuhina Spring 2025
      • Jesse Howard Spring 2025
      • Paul Simmons Spring 2025
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2025
      • Elzbieta Zdunek Spring 2025
      • Na Yoon Amelia Cha-Ryu Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Poetry Spring 2025 >
      • Deborah Bacharach Spring 2025
      • Diego Báez Spring 2025
      • Jaswinder Bolina Spring 2025
      • ​Ash Bowen Spring 2025
      • Christian J. Collier Spring 2025
      • ​Shou Jie Eng Spring 2025
      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
      • Matthew Gilbert Spring 2025
      • Tammy C. Greenwood Spring 2025
      • Alejandra Hernández ​Spring 2025
      • Ben Kline ​Spring 2025
      • ​David Moolten Spring 2025
      • ​Tamer Mostafa Spring 2025
      • ​Rongfei Mu Spring 2025
      • Cynthia Neely Spring 2025
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2025
      • ​Bleah Patterson Spring 2025
      • ​M.A. Scott Spring 2025
      • ​Liam Strong ​ Spring 2025
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2025
      • ​Cassandra Whitaker Spring 2025
      • Angelique Zobitz Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Fiction Spring 2025 >
      • Vanessa Blakeslee Spring 2025
      • K. J. Coyle Spring 2025
      • Meredith MacLeod Davidson Spring 2025
      • Jessica Mosher Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Nonfiction Spring 2025 >
      • JM Huscher Spring 2025
      • Qurrat ul Ain Raza Abbas Spring 2025